


The Scientific Method

by pluviales



Series: Holzbert Collection [1]
Category: Ghostbusters (2016)
Genre: F/F, like... so gay, this is so gay
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-25
Updated: 2016-07-29
Packaged: 2018-07-26 16:57:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 5,691
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7582297
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pluviales/pseuds/pluviales
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which Erin sees Holtz kissing another woman, freaks out, and concludes she must be homophobic. Because that's the most logical conclusion, right?</p><p>entirely inspired by this article: "straight guy worries he's being homophobic to gay roommate, realizes he's fallen in love with him"</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. The First Conclusion

**Author's Note:**

> [straight guy ...](https://66.media.tumblr.com/0936833eb506353eee9e56cad3c1d29f/tumblr_inline_oa6p8m51Hl1r2gvvv_540.jpg)

The first time Erin saw Holtz kissing another woman, she was toying with an unwrapped chopstick. With its red shutters hoisted up to entice potential diners, and the windows ajar just enough to hear the distant rumble of lunch-hour traffic, Zhu's was unusually quiet. Seated at the bar, one leg crossed over the other, Erin was twirling the chopstick between her fingers like she would pencils in a lecture hall as she watched Holtz and the woman — tall, Latina, with a nose stud and incredible cheekbones — chatting outside. Bennie, meanwhile, was resting his elbows against the counter and bemoaning the extra mileage he's chalked up these last few weeks, driving all the way to the fire station. How much he misses the trip taking just two flights of stairs. It was code for how much he misses _them_ , Erin knew, and it was surprisingly endearing — but her attention was occupied elsewhere.

The woman out there with Holtzmann shared her style: denim jumpsuit with the cuffs rolled up, white crop with a criss-cross back that's tied at the nape of her neck, her hair swept up in a messy bun, her weight shifting from side to side and thighs casting swaying shadows over the sidewalk. She was beautiful, Erin observed, while twirling the wooden utensil about her fingers. Her freckled nose scrunched up and her cheeks dimpled when Holtz made her laugh.

By now Bennie had moved on to gossip about the new prospective tenants — even though Erin and the others hadn't even finished moving out yet, the poky loft was proving pretty popular among young 'no-waste vegan-types', apparently. But Erin wasn't listening: she was watching Holtz brush purple bangs behind the woman's ear and kiss her softly — a measured and delicate kiss, the most tender Erin had ever seen Holtz be — before reverting completely and shooting her date finger-guns as a parting gesture. Then she breezed through the restaurant door, causing its beaded curtain to ripple, and wiped her lips with the back of her hand.

At some point during all of this, Erin had given herself a papercut.

Her chest was tight; her leg bobbing in her seat. She felt guilty: she hadn't ever reacted so strongly to the intimate glimpses she'd caught of Abby with her dates (often firemen, often swinging around the pole in their lab for her at the end of the night). Nor was she perturbed in the least when she caught Patty kissing the archival historian guy from the National History Museum, who'd called them out a fortnight ago to tackle some dino-ghosts (or _paleo-ghosts_ , as the _Times_ had put it in an attempt to sophisticate the encounter).

So as Holtz sashayed over, popping her hips one at a time in a weird slow-groove to the ambiental Chinese pipe-music, Erin found herself lost in panic. She'd always been fine with Holtz's little displays of affection towards her and the others, never so fatuous as to subscribe to the lowest-common-denominator belief that gay women were all inexplicably predatory towards straight ones. But why couldn't she handle the sight of Holtz actually kissing a woman; why had her throat swollen up, and her stomach clenched? It was the first time, Erin rationalised, that she'd actually _seen_ Holtz's sexuality, that it'd been real, rather than hypothetical... was she a _homophobe_?

Erin blanched at the thought, but logically speaking, based on her reaction, it made sense. But she was an open-minded, if somewhat repressed, liberal. She wasn't _homophobic_. She loved Holtz, Holtz was one of her closest friends, Holtz was— squeezing her earlobe?

"... through the door, into a parallel Zhu's, where the wax dummies reign supreme and even your friends can move no more..."

Over-enunciating in a melodramatic timbre, Holtz was poking fun at her friend's near-paralytic state: slapping her hand against Erin's face, she smushed her cheeks together and peered intently into her eyes, then ran her finger from the bridge of Erin's nose to the squidgy cartilage, and licked her fingertip with the very tip of her tongue as she drew away in faux-deliberation.

Then, turning her eyes over the other elderly patrons, she gave Erin a knowing nod and stage-whispered, "You're alive ... how did you _survive_?"

—Holtz had leaned in close to finish the gag, and it made Erin's heart pound: undoubtedly, she supposed, because she was still fretting over her newfound prejudice. Rolling her eyes to the ceiling in the face of Holtz's wacky grin, she masked her ruminations with a wry smile — the most convincing that she could muster.

"Come on, let's get started — do you own a watch, by the way? Timekeeper? Grandfather clock? You're like two hours late—"

 

 

Upstairs, in the old lab, packing awaited them. They'd officially moved out weeks prior, but odd knick-knacks and furniture still remained to be shifted into boxes. Maintaining business while changing location was tough, so they worked in teams: usually pairs, but sometimes threes, with the spare left to watch Kevin. Indeed, all four of them had planned to finish up in the lab that afternoon, but Abby and Patty had ended up bundled into a slapdash midday-news interview with CBS in response to ghost sightings near the Alamo — wherever possible, any interviews were left to those two: Holtz didn't come across too well on camera, and Erin broke out in tremendous anxiety-sweats.

Though still somewhat shaken by her crisis of emotion downstairs, she at least appreciated the opportunity to busy herself separately to Holtz: the others had, with a highly humiliating display made of it, left the clearing-up of Kevin's desk area for Erin to do (for although the nights were drawing in colder in New York, Kevin was staying with his family in Australia for the _summer_  there — although their only contact with him so far had come in the form of a postcard featuring the dusky mountain peaks of Sri Lanka, with only the words "Wrong turn!" and a smiley face scribbled on the back).

She'd already packed up most of his desk items: the computer; photo-frames with Polaroids of himself (mostly blurry, or half-obscured by his thumb) taped _over_  the glass; an intellectually-demanding book of crossword puzzles, to her initial surprise (but which, when she'd flicked through, were all incomplete — unless you counted colouring in all of the blank spaces as finishing off a crossword).

But as she turned her attention to dismantling the desk chair — the swivel kind, on wheels, at his adorably earnest request — Erin spotted a woolly knit draped over the back of it, one she'd not noticed before. Deep red, frayed a little at the cuffs and hem, she couldn't remember him ever wearing it: which was rare, since she'd whiled away a considerable length of time studying his clothes — his _clothes_ , not the body which wore them, she'd been persistent in clarifying. She'd even figured out which days he did his laundry.

So it was more than a little peculiar that Erin couldn't for the life of her place this sweater in her thoughts of him. It looked soft, well-made; she picked it up gingerly, folded it over in her hands. Casting a furtive glance across the room, she saw Holtz gleefully engaged in packing up her works-in-progress, and going about it pretty recklessly for highly reactive, HAZMAT-level-dangerous machinery: rather than the classic, tried-and-tested technique of picking items up and placing them carefully into a cardboard box, she'd employed something of a ring-toss approach. Surreptitiously, therefore, Erin brought the oversized pullover to her nose and snuck a quick sniff— but it didn't smell like Kevin. She inhaled more deeply: cinnamon, gasoline, thyme, electrical-fire. Bewildered, she moved the sweater away from her face, but the scent, inexplicably, seemed to grow stronger—

Suddenly, there was Holtzmann: leaning in over her shoulder, pressing in close behind her, a Cheshire cat smile with a masterfully quirked brow. "What'cha doing with my jersey there, Sting?"

(An appalling nickname which she'd coined, much to Erin's ire, after Abby's mortifying prank of playing _Every Breath You Take_  over the soundsystem one morning while Erin was making Kevin his breakfast tea and attempting to forge a little conversation.)

Erin reeled back as though she'd been electrocuted, flinging the knitted sweater at her friend like it was a landmine. Then, in an attempt to cover her discomfort at Holtz's sudden proximity, she slapped a hand to her chest and laughed at having been given a fright, like some dizzy Southern belle. She was unconvincing: the flash of wounded confusion which passed over Holtzmann's countenance, however momentary, didn't go unnoticed.

"I thought it was Kevin's," she finally managed weakly, to which Holtz gave a brusque nod as she tied the pullover around her waist. Erin averted her eyes as her cheeks and neck burned; the awkward atmosphere was suffocating. Her mind was scrabbling for a change of subject but Holtzmann herself soon bounced back, flicking the sleeves knotted above her hips and looking up at Erin with a sly smile.

"My bad. I must've left it here the other night," she winked.

"The other night? What were you do— _oh_." Erin cleared her throat. "Awesome," she said breathily, before chastising herself internally — _'awesome'? what sort of teenage boy_  — "The same woman..." she was making vague gestures, pointing her thumb towards the staircase, "...outside?"

Dipping her head coquettishly, Holtz tugged at her collar as if shaking out the heat and scratched her jawbone. "Ahem," she coughed, tellingly.

"No? _Oh_. Well, I guess, well," she couldn't stop speaking; why couldn't she stop speaking? As Erin stood blathering her face was alight, and her discomfort stark. The idea of Holtzmann with _another_  woman, upstairs, likely even at Kevin's desk — the twisting, sinking sensation in Erin's stomach was a novel feeling, one she couldn't quite categorise, but which to her horror seemed to align with repulsion —   
"... you get yours!"

A puny laugh, a feeble punch to Holtz's arm. She wanted to lock herself away in one of their containment units for life.

Eyeing her with a hint of suspicion, but too easy-going to check her friend's behaviour, Holtz simply returned the chuckle, gave her a two-finger salute, and skirted back over to her corner. As she went, Erin sensed her heady scent melting away with her: only upon realising its absence did she notice how much she'd liked its presence.

They passed an hour more or so quietly working, interrupted occasionally by calamitous crashes and bangs from Holtz's workspace — as well as the simmering and spitting spillages of more than one toxic liquid onto the floor — and small, cheerful bursts of conversation. After numerous covert glances, Erin ascertained with confidence that Holtz was completely fine, and not in any particular throes of anxiety or crises of faith — unlike her.

Each time that she relived her earlier feelings, her earlier actions, which all so evidently indicated that she had issues, clear underlying _issues_  with Holtz's sexuality — a sickness rose to her throat in shock and shame. How fixated she'd been on the woman she'd spotted Holtz kissing; how quickly she'd one-eightied when she realised the alluring scent belonged not to Kevin, but Holtz; how much it coiled her chest to consider Holtz's multiple affairs — everything pointed to one conclusion, logically.

She was homophobic.

 

 


	2. The Second Conclusion

A week later, Ghostbusters Inc. (' _It'd be like the Scooby Doo team! You're lying if you guys haven't always wanted to be in the Scooby Doo team_ ', Patty had enthused to persuade them) were completely accustomed to their new workspace, already converting the fire station's loft into something of a makeshift home: Erin had brought curtains of a Monet-style dappled blue, and replaced them after the first pair had been burnt down. Holtzmann had bought a fire extinguisher — which, ironically, the station had been lacking — after her curtain-burning, and also some lava lamps. Patty had won an antique bookshelf in an auction, to which she was adding increasingly obscure volumes each day ( _A Comprehensive History of The New York Subway Grid,_  and _Big Apples: New York City and the Harvest Surplus of 1984_ were the latest arrivals). Abby had decked out the place with blankets and pillows, too — for both comfort and safety. She'd also draped fairy lights around the fireman's pole at some point, which was very pretty but had been bad news to Erin when, after being singled out with criticism in the _Post_ , she'd leapt down it to try and prove that she _was_ as 'fun and open' as the others.

Still nursing tender thighs, therefore, Erin half-hobbled into the station the next morning. Only Patty had already arrived, as was customary: the other two often ran into some sort of mischief or inexplicable delay between their shared Chinatown apartment, the subway, and the station. As was their habit, Erin and Patty convened around the coffee machine for a morning fix — usually, with both being a little groggy, little was said, but today Patty was almost _bouncing_  with energy. 

"How many cups have you already had?" Erin teased, leaning back as she poured, to avoid the rising steam.

Patty scoffed, mock-indignant, and shifted about her feet. "Only the one!"

"Oh, uh-huh? Then what's got you all fired up?" 

A pause. Serious deliberation clouded Patty's countenance — she inclined her head, clearly chewing something over. 

"Um ..." she began, hesitant, before casting her doubts aside and leaning in to address Erin confidentially, even though — besides the ghosts in the containment units — they were the only two in the room. "Listen — don’t let on that you know, y’know? She's unexpectedly secretive about this, which is weird, because she sure wasn't shy about shoving her melted-off toenail in my face just last month—"

"Patty?"

"— Sorry. That was just some traumatic stuff. Anyway—" her face lit up in delight, and a gleeful shriek broke out — "Holtzy's got a _girlfriend!_ She told me she's been seeing her for a couple of weeks. Puerto Rican girl, super cute from the photo she showed me — somehow they convinced a tourist to take a shot of this girl dangling Holtz by her ankles off the High Line —"

Patty was elated as she spoke, her eyes sparkling with happiness for her best friend, unable to contain the sweet anecdotes pouring forth. But Erin's mimicked glee was somewhat exaggerated for her benefit: although she gasped and grinned in synchronised reactions with Patty, she couldn't help but feel disappointed.

For after the sweater incident, once she'd gone home and cooked dinner, watched a couple of _Gilmore Girls_ reruns and got ready for bed, she'd lain awake for hours. It was much in Erin's nature to dwell on every occurrence in her life, analysing and over-analysing actions and words until she'd dissected an event to the point of its complete distortion. She'd picked up the habit during her high school days, when she perceived every joke cracked by a jock in class or burst of laughter in the hallway as coded; as aimed at her. The 'Ghost Girl' days. Her anxiety had calmed as she'd grown up, flourished in academia, and scored her doctorate — but the tendency to dwell on the difficult parts of her life still lingered, and had been in full force that night.

The part which Erin struggled most with was her conclusion: _how_ could she be homophobic? She was a good person — at least, she strove to be as good and tolerant as a person could be. For a night or two, the unpleasant thought kept her awake, until a _eureka_ moment struck her like the apple to Newton's forehead. 

She wasn't homophobic — at least, not _definitely._  Not yet. Rather, at that moment, she was only a _bad scientist_. 

For, in leaping to one logical conclusion almost instantaneously, and latching onto it, Erin had neglected the golden cornerstone of all her education: the scientific method. She needed to outline all possible conclusions, then to experiment and conduct research for each, before she could decisively diagnose her problem. So she’d decided to start with the first possible truth: that she was a homophobe.

After work, therefore, only a few days after her turmoil had first begun, she'd fired up her home laptop, poured herself a glass of wine, and taken a deep breath. Then she’d opened up Google. No — Google Incognito. (Just in case she died in a freak accident the next morning, and her parents were read her complete internet search history during the wake.) 

Image Search. The input cursor blinking expectantly, her fingers trembling.

_Women kissing_

Enter. 

Erin frowned, and rolled her eyes. The photos on the screen were all glamour, all hoax, all for men — it wouldn't suffice for her investigation. She hit the backspace and tried again:

_Gay women kissing_

Enter.

This time, the results were perfect: real women, their candid moments captured at Pride; married women, in gleaming white and embracing at the altar. Military women, returning home to their girlfriends with tears in their eyes. Women kissing at protests, holding signs above their heads, defiant. Erin scrolled through these images for a considerable amount of time, nervous at first — dreading that her first conclusion would indeed be proved correct — but the more she saw, the more endeared, mushy,  _sentimental_ she felt. 

She felt joy for these women, if, inexplicably, a little heartache at the same time. No trace of the coiled-chest sensation, the thick throat or blanching stomach. Nothing at all like her reaction the week earlier. However, aware that it hadn't been a photo of Holtz and the woman kissing, but the _real thing_ , she fired up a couple videos for more conclusive research. 

Careful to heed well clear of the pornographic ones, which were almost all cultivated and created by creepy guys, Erin watched the vlogs that gay women had uploaded themselves; footage of Prides, homages to their girlfriends on camera. Hearing their accounts made her smile, laugh; towards the end, she even teared up a little.

By the end of the night, therefore, she'd decided quite conclusively that homophobia was _not_ the answer to her averse reaction to Holtz. And the next morning, as she'd hoisted herself upstairs and called out a greeting to Patty, she'd been confident, content — still without a resolution to her problem, but more eager to see Holtz with her new reassurance in mind.

And yet, such contentment, such rational, level-headed conviction, had shattered like a broken chandelier the moment that Patty breathlessly squealed the word _girlfriend_. Once the gushing was over, and Erin had again been made to swear to secrecy, she nonchalantly sipped her coffee — immediately regretting it when her lips were set on fire — and, doing her best to saunter away casually despite her burning, numbing mouth, crossed back to her desk. 

Easing into her chair with her fingers pressed to her lips, Erin sank into confusion. Despite her grandiose plans of experimentation, she'd been so eager to redeem herself that she'd not really even pondered any other conclusions. But the coils were yet again rising, producing the sensation that her intestines were strangling her stomach from within, and it was again at the notion of Holtz being in a relationship with a woman. 

She shook her head: _what_ , in this realm or beyond, was wrong with her? Her thoughts flicked back to the burning embarrassment she'd felt when caught with Holtz's sweater; to the full-body shock when she realised it wasn't Kevin's. Her eyes turned to his desk, vacant, with an _'On Vacation!'_ Post-it taped to the computer screen. She missed him, missed observing his quirks — observing him in general, too.

A lightbulb sprang into dazzling illumination above her head.

  _Jealousy_. 

That had to be it: she _envied_ Holtz — because she was kissing people, because she was in a new relationship, and because Erin was missing Kevin. Her own silly affection for him was the obtrusion blocking her from feeling happy for her friend. The crushing feeling which rose like a grim fog within her at the notion of Holtzmann having a girlfriend was not homophobia, but  _envy_. And no Googling could help her with curing that: perhaps she could go on a date, dip her toes in the water, have a conversation with another human being _without_ mention of the word 'ectoplasm'. 

There. That was her problem, and that was her solution. She was content with this second conclusion, far more so than with the first: her mood lifted, and by the time Abby and Holtz did amble in, she'd become so engrossed in her work — her section of a new book, one which would feature all of their faces in the dust-jacket — that her worries were all but dispelled. The two made their usual ruckus upon stepping inside, animating Patty and Erin's quiet study, and the four women spent a little while catching each other up on the news of their day. 

Where Patty's input was concerned, she continued to bob about in her seat, drumming her fingers on the hard cover of her book and casting not-so-subtle, yes-very-frequent glances at Holtzmann. At one point, Abby asked her about the museum guy, the historian she'd had a date with — it wasn't often that they talked about men, but with the holidays creeping closer, and billboards and television ads blaring about couples' Christmases all across the city, it was hard not to think about your relationship status.

Coyly, Patty shrugged. "He gave me a call — and not about ghosts this time, if you know what I’m saying," she laughed. "We're going out again this Friday."

Smiles broke out around the room: they’d each screened this guy, Michael, in their own personal way — Holtz's method had quite literally been a _screening_ , utilizing some sort of handheld gadget which she’d swept over him like an airport security scanner while his back was turned — and he'd come out faultless all round. 

"Nice work!" Abby nodded, and Erin echoed her genuine congratulations. Patty and Michael suited each other well, she thought, and it was no secret that Patty was into him. Her smile was even wider than usual these days, even though she still stuck to her conviction that she did _not_ rely on any man to make her happy. 

On this point, Erin often agreed with her — after all, she hadn't needed any boy to ‘fix’ her during her high-school distress: she'd done that herself. Likewise, she'd been mostly single throughout her studies, dating the occasional grad student but chiefly focused on her _own_ development — no male distraction could cause her to throw away all those years of hard work, climbing the career ladder. She didn't _need_ a man; she never had. 

_—Wait_.

Her train of thought, up to now chugging along its course quite merrily, suddenly veered off the tracks. _She didn't need a man_. When she internally repeated this statement — this hypothesis — to herself, she stood by it. Despite all her fawning over Kevin, she was perfectly content being single.

So how could she _envy_ Holtz? How could she involuntarily, whole-heartedly _despair_ at Holtz's involvement — but not Patty's? She glanced at the nuclear engineer in question, who was toying with one arm of her glasses while the other was caught between her teeth, and her mind reeled. 

She needed another conclusion.


	3. The Final Conclusion

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  ** _Please_ read!**  
> 
> After rewatching one of my fav Holztbert scenes, I thought I'd do something a _little_ different with this last chapter, as reading fic goes.
> 
> Basically: this chapter, the grand finale, has a soundtrack which features in the story itself — so what I recommend is queueing up the three tracks in Spotify/Youtube and listening to them when you get to the parts where they're playing in the chapter.
> 
> I actually found that it's timed pretty well if you take your time reading.
> 
> Here are the three songs: [One](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UnPMoAb4y8U), [Two](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tdw7kxD8eUc) and [Three](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jqVrNK4uiB4) — I'm also going to embed the links at the right points in the text as a visual cue / second option for loading stuff up.
> 
> I'm not saying you've _gotta_ read it like this, but... it just makes it so much better!

Another week had gone by — longer, actually. They'd been so busy that there hadn't been time to count out the days. Two large-scale ghost breakouts, the first originating in a bizarrely specific sandwich shop named Don't Hold The Pickle, which served pickle juice, pickle-mayo subs, even pickle pudding (that place had required two bouts of explanation: Patty's usual history, explaining why in the hell so many ghosts were bursting out of pickle jars, and Abby's elucidation of the 'hipster' subculture for Erin: 'It's a _pop-up shop_ , see? It'll only stick around for a few months. I mean, they don't expect _this_ crap to become a real establish— oh yikes, sorry, fellas. You have a lovely restaurant here. Great work.'). The second breakout, somehow even more rancid than the first, had come to wreak havoc in a _taxidermist's_. After that experience, to say that none of them would be getting a new pet soon would be an understatement.

Exhausted, therefore, Erin had no desire to work. Especially not at dusk, after-hours, and missing her biweekly _Gilmore Girls_ fix. But there'd been another work-related development recently — one a little more enticing than retching ghost-vultures and pickle-scummed fingernails. Following a blistering interview with Dean Filmore in the _Post_ , in which he denigrated her work and called for her discreditation, the City College of New York had reached out to her to ask whether she'd like to deliver a short run of weekly seminars — only a handful, though, and nothing prestigious.

Erin — quietly missing the mahogany wood of lecture hall tables, having a plastic clicker in her fist, even hearing snores from the back — had accepted their offer immediately. The first seminar would be in two nights' time, and she was terrified. A half-finished presentation glared up at her judgingly, the computer screen's bright beam jarring against the dim oranges and pinks of dusk. She sighed, tired and insecure, and slumped her face between her hands.

Across the room, the stereo light blinked blue. Erin didn't see this — her eyes were closed, and she was summoning soothing thoughts to mind: lensless glasses, fitted white tees, the mountains of Sri Lanka. Red sweaters, overalls, heady, gasoline-tinged scents. Holtzmann — _Holtzmann_?

[At the sudden sound of a saxophone blaring from the stereo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UnPMoAb4y8U), Erin's head jerked upright. _How in the hell—?_ Her first thought, naturally, was of ghosts, but a quick sweep of the room showed no signs of any ethereal presence. The P.K.E. meter mounted on the wall, likewise, was still. _Huh_. The stereo probably just needed fixing: technology had a tendency to go haywire up in the station, surrounded by such kinetic energies. They'd already had to send the coffee machine for repairs twice, after a wardrobe-ruining and finger-burning explosion, followed by another which conveniently occurred the day _after_ their waterproof-poncho period of wariness had finished.

By now, the soul music had progressed to vocals, and Erin could identify it —  _Try A Little Tenderness_ , Otis Redding, from Holtzmann's collection. Holtz was into way deeper cuts than this, but when she'd played it for them once, Erin had to admit somewhat sheepishly that she only knew it from that one scene in _Pretty In Pink_ , where Duckie bursts through the doors and dances to it around the room.

She rose from her desk. In half a mind to switch the stereo off, in the other to dance to it, she ended up hovering, caught in limbo. The song was building, nearly at the Duckie part — the nostalgia was killing her. That scene had been legendary, iconic even, among her friends when they were growing up and discovering movies — and again, she glanced about the lab to check for ghosts: perhaps it was the spirit of John Hughes himself.

By now, she was bopping her head a little, moving her shoulders: Holtz's music was always a little infectious, a little irresistible. Just like Holtz herself, she supposed. Even just hearing music from her collection conjured up her presence — Erin could practically see her grooving in her corner, more likely than not with seriously hazardous equipment in tow. In fact, as Erin inhaled, even her scent wafted to her senses — a scent which she was beginning to wish she could buy a Yankee Candle of, a realisation which ruffled her a little. Even though she was entirely alone in the lab, withneither human nor spectral presence, she was blushing.

She turned her attention back to the music, whose volume she swore had been cranked up since it started. The _Pretty In Pink_ scene was playing in her mind as she loosened up, summoned to memory as the familiar musical motifs resounded about the lab — the keyboard wailing, the drums building, and Otis pouring out his heart. In just a moment, she remembered, in would burst — _Holtzmann?_

She'd kicked open the door with a black combat boot, rolling her shoulders and pointing to the sky as she shimmied into the lab, yellow shades on and miming every word. Spinning over to the desk, she silent-sang into Erin's face, the apogee of melodrama. Erin had wondered before whether Holtz was a theatre kid in her youth: early on, she'd even asked Abby about it, whose response was 'Nah — she's just a little kooky.'

This was an understatement. As if thrust by some magnitudinal wind Holtz had skittered backwards, punching the ground in time to the drum kick. She flung her back against the wall, arms splayed and fingers curling into fists. In her Dionysiac frenzy, she almost sent one of the proton packs flying — it was left reverberating precariously after a particularly emphatic air-punch. She whipped her head left, right, left and slid down to the floor, kneeling with her shoulders back like a rockstar, grinding out her hips and ruffling her hands through her hair and _nailing_ the impression as the song reached its climax.

Throughout her performance Erin was agape, mesmerised, as though she were watching a whirlwind tear through their lab. She couldn't look away — she was too captivated by the whirling ball of energy whizzing about the room like a hurricane, reenacting her youth before her eyes, with all the effortless cool of a real-life movie star and a little unhingedness on the side.

Otis was fading out; [the music shuffled to something else](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tdw7kxD8eUc) — _Al Green?_ — and Holtzmann dragged herself up off the floor, chest heaving, beaming from ear to ear as she caught her breath.

A moment of bewildered silence passed on Erin's part as Holtz sauntered over, leaving her to explain herself. 

"Testing out a new gadget," she winked.

"What? The art of dance?"

From her pocket, Holtz revealed a small clicker-device, not so dissimilar to the one that Erin had needed to replace the day before, since her own had _mysteriously_   _vanished_.

"Remote stereo control," she grinned, before remembering where she'd obtained the base parts— "Sorry. But that was pretty damn cool, am I right? I activated it from all the way across the street!"

Erin could only meet her with silence: she'd just thought of a third possible conclusion, and was speechless at the very thought of it.

"Not impressed?" Holtzmann pouted, and shrugged. She turned away, heading to her own desk, and dancing a couple of _pas-de-bourres_ to the music as she went. Erin watched her leap into her seat and throw her feet up on the desk, clicking out the joints in her neck. “Not even a _little?”_

In that one movement, as she leaned back in her chair and eyed Erin with impish amusement, Holtz had effortlessly proved the third conclusion.

Erin gulped.

The girlfriend; the stomach-coiling; the jealousy; the sweater; her  _fixation_ on the whole thing — it wasn't _homophobia_ , nor envy. It was — it was an overwhelming, all-consuming desire to — to _dance._

She was still standing at her desk, still silent. But she had begun to move: a slow groove, pushing out first one shoulder and then the other in front of her, a little stiff at first. Stepping out from behind the desk, then, she kept the dance going, popping her hips and slipping more into the rhythm as the room opened up around her.

Holtz — at first entirely bewildered, and making exaggerated glasses-wiping gestures with her fists as she watched — rose again herself. She mimicked Erin's lazy groove, but her movements flowed more naturally, her limbs more accustomed to dance. Within a verse, they were right in front of each other, miming the lines to each other: smiling at first, laughing even — both tired senseless, both acting half out of madness — but as they kept going, their expressions sobered; their eyes fixed on each other, and stayed there. Their swaying bodies danced even closer.

"Holtz," Erin started, breaking the spell, mouth dry: she'd never felt so— so wholly _bewitched_. "Don't you have a..."   
Holtz shook her head slowly from side to side, still dancing.  
"But Patty said—"  
"I know," she interrupted, and for the first time in all of Erin's acquaintance, the nuclear engineer appeared almost _bashful,_  embarrassed, even. She bit her lip, smiling sheepishly, and shrugged. "I guess I was just _tired of feeling alone_ ," she smirked, and the horrendous pun made Erin groan.

[The song had melted into another, now](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jqVrNK4uiB4): one that was somehow even slower, even more passionate. The two women were close enough to make a nun faint. Erin’s thoughts, half-drunk on passion, drifted back to a distant memory: an afternoon above Zhu’s, their team’s adventure barely started; a dance, with blow torches and a fire extinguisher. _We’re dancing?_  she’d asked then, held enrapt mainly from sheer bewilderment. But now, only _now_  were they truly dancing. And everything, from the moment they’d met, had fallen into place.

Erin had only one question left before she could conclude her investigation, though, one last loose thread: 

"How did you know I was up here?"

At this, Holtz smiled. "I didn't, I was coming here to work alone — I’ve just always wanted to dance into a room like that."

Erin laughed — and though she couldn't see it herself, Holtz watched her nose scrunch up, and the freckles on her cheeks dance. 

Entirely vulnerable, entirely unguarded, Erin was collecting every new sensation: Holtz's legs twining with hers, the brass band, Holtz's hands moving around her back; the dusk, the fairy lights on the pole; Holtz's fingertips sweeping her hair out of her eyes.

She’d been wrong about something else, too, that morning she’d first seen the kiss. 

It wasn’t the most tender that Holtz could be. 

As their heads angled to one side, they each drew in a breath.

As their eyes locked onto each other, Holtz's were wide, pausing for a moment to check what feelings shone through Erin's.

Almost welling up, Erin nodded: _Yes. This was it. This was_ right.

As their lips brushed gently, and the coils within her chest burst loose with euphoria, she was cognisant of only one thing: that she had found the best possible conclusion.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hope that the musical element worked out, and I also hope that you enjoyed the read! 
> 
> Please, let me know your thoughts when you're done. 
> 
> (Also: just because these two are everything, I might end up writing an epilogue to this. We'll see!)
> 
>  
> 
> [The _Pretty In Pink_ scene referenced.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mNGIg8f-0Wc)


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